Chinese Disruption

How disruptive could this be?

China may consider changing its one-child policy because it has helped slow population growth over the last three decades, a Chinese official said Sunday.

There would be an estimated 400 million more people in China without it.

Under the current mandate, Beijing limits most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two to conserve scarce resources.

There are also concerns about China's aging population, with those aged 60 or older expected to top 200 million by 2015 and 280 million by 2025, according to the government

Could The Days Of Cheap Goods From China Be Ending?

China's Inflation Hits American Price Tags

How will this affect the US economy? Is China losing its cheap labor?
Could another country with cheap labor rise?

Soaring energy and raw material costs, a falling dollar and new business rules here are forcing Chinese factories to increase the prices of their exports, according to analysts and Western companies doing business here.

“China has been the world’s factory and the anchor of the global disconnect between rising material prices and lower consumer prices,” said Dong Tao, an economist for Credit Suisse. “But its heyday is over. We’re going to see higher prices.”

Many Chinese factory owners say a tough new labor law, which went into effect on Jan. 1, complicates the hiring and firing process and threatens to raise labor costs even more.

Samsung Pre-Installs Inspiry's Mobile 2D Barcode Application

Samsung Installs Inspiry's 2D Code Application On Mobile Phones

BEJING, June 12, 2007 — Inspiry Limited (“Inspiry”), China’s leading 2D barcode technology and application provider, today announces its strategic partnership agreement with Samsung to pre-install its self-developed mobile 2D barcode software on Samsung’s handsets. The first Samsung handset model preloaded with Inspiry’s mobile QR Code software, i718, is already widely available in China.



Since 2006, Inspiry has been selected by China Mobile as the sole 2D barcode technology provider for China Mobile’s customized handsets. This strategic partnership has led to the successful deployment of 2D barcode software in mobile devices shipped by world class handset manufacturers including Nokia, Lenovo, Dopod, NEC and ZTE.

Scanbuy And Syscan Digital Announce Strategic Partnership To Market 2D Mobile Barcodes To Chinese Mobile Carriers

Scanbuy, Inc.,a global provider of mobile marketing solutions, and Syscan Digital Systems ), a leading provider of 2D barcode solutions in China, today announced a strategic and long term partnership to market a range of 2D barcode services to mobile carriers in China.

Syscan Digital’s CM (Compact Matrix) and GM (Grid Matrix) barcodes were approved as China National Industrial Standard by the Ministry of Information Industry in 2006, and makes it the first Chinese owned national standard.

The strategic partnership will create a solution combining technologies of both companies around 2D barcode services including: mobile ticketing and couponing, anti-fraud solutions and media codes such as WAP, SMS, or vCard codes that provide consumers with quick and simple access to digital content. The combined platform will be promoted by Chinese mobile operators and will leverage the respective strengths of both companies.

Lon Chen, Chief Executive Officer, Syscan Digital System Ltd. said "We chose to partner with Scanbuy because they are the leader in making it easy for consumers to fully utilize enhanced services via their wireless phones".


China is the world’s largest mobile communications market and Syscan Digital, with their expertise, relationships and commitment to innovation, is the clear choice as a partner to bring mobile 2D barcodes to this burgeoning market,” said Jonathan Bulkeley, Chief Executive Officer of Scanbuy, Inc.

Scanbuy entered into a partnership last year with Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, to preload Scanbuy’s 2D barcodes application on Nokia’s multimedia handsets. The Scanbuy technology allows users of the Nokia S60 handsets to recognize and decode barcodes on products, media and advertising and to link directly to content and services from their handsets.

ScanBuy also signed an exclusive agreement with DuPont Packaging to place interactive 2D barcodes on packaging.

This partnership between Syscan Digital and Scanbuy, two recognized leaders in their fields, is another step toward the adoption of 2D mobile marketing technology in the fast growing Chinese mobile market.

Founded in year 2001, Syscan Digital was led by a group of industry veterans and has strong intellectual property portfolio with over 100 patents filed in China and internationally. Syscan Digital made the “Best Mobile Barcode Solution Provider” in China in 2006.

China Uses 2D Barcodes For Mobile Ads

This article does a good job of summarizing the Chinese Physical World Connection players.

From Business Week China:Cracking the Mobile Ad Biz

The lucrative potential of the mainland's tech-starved mobile advertising market could be unlocked by two-dimensional barcodes (2d codes).

A new kind of mobile advertising technology, however, could be the key that unlocks the country's 461 million mobile phone screens to advertisers.

The technology uses two-dimensional barcodes, a more evolved cousin of the humble Universal Product Code found on groceries, to create an advertising channel with an aura of science-fiction.

Two-dimensional barcodes can be used to bridge the online and offline worlds, turning, say, a coffee table into a physical hyperlink, and your mobile phone into a giant mouse pointer. You "click" the barcode on the coffee table by taking a picture of it with the camera on your phone, and then are automatically taken online.

For a three-month period that ended in February, Chinese barcode pioneer Gmedia provided Starbucks with barcodes to display on tabletops in the chain's 50 outlets in Beijing. When a user clicked on one, they were linked to a website that allowed them to redeem a free coffee.

Another company trying to cash in on physical hyperlinking is Hong Kong-based MyClick . Although it uses a patented photo recognition technology, not barcodes, the end result is virtually identical. Any visual medium - a magazine page, billboard or television commercial - can carry an image framed by a special border. The user simply snaps a photo of the framed image.

"Advertisers will know where someone was when they clicked the ad and guess what they were doing at that moment," said Sage Brennan of research firm JLM Pacific Epoch. "If [barcode-reading software] is in every handset around the country, the incentive to insert a tiny code [in advertisements] is huge."

Gmedia and Inspiry , which promotes its own standard, have announced partnerships with China Mobile. Inspiry has also persuaded handset manufacturers to pre-install its software in "hundreds of thousands" of units, according to Lawrence Tse, a general partner at venture capitalist firm Gobi Partners , which has invested in the company